ever crowd you out. Say that you believe
me. Say that all the thistles are rooted up and thrown away."

"Rooted up and burned--burned root and branch, my child. I promise it. I
trust my child; she is mine; my loving one. _Ainsi soit-il._ And now,"
Madame von Marwitz spoke with sudden gaiety, "and now show me your home,
my Karen, show me all over this home of yours to which already you are
so attached. Ah--it is a child in love!"

They went from room to room, their arms around each other's waists.
Madame von Marwitz cast her spell over Mrs. Barker in the kitchen, and
smiled a long smile upon Rose, the housemaid. "Yes, yes, very nice, very
pretty," she said, in the spare-room, the little dressing-room, the
dining-room and kitchen. In Karen's room, with its rose-budded chintz
and many photographs of herself, of Gregory, she paused and looked
about. "Very, very pretty," she repeated. "You like bedsteads of brass,
my Karen?"

"Yes, Tante. They look so clean and bright."

"So clean and bright. I do not think that I could sleep in brass,"
Madame von Marwitz mused. "But it is a simple child."

"Yes, that is just it, Tante," said Karen, smiling. "And I wanted to
explain to you about the drawing-room. You see it is that; I am simple;
not a sea-anemone of taste, like you. I quite well see things. I see
that Les Solitudes is beautiful, and that this is not like Les
Solitudes. Yet I like it here just as it is."

"Because it is his, is it not so, my child-in-love? Ah, she must not be
teased. You can be happy, then, among so much brass?--so many things
that glitter and are highly coloured?"

"Yes, indeed. And it is a pretty bedroom, Tante. You must say that it is
a pretty bedroom?"

"Is it? Must I? Pretty? Yes, no doubt it is pretty. Yet I could have
wished that my Karen's nest had more distinction, expressed a finer
sense of personality. I imagine that every young woman in this vast
beehive of homes has just such a bedroom."

"You think so, Tante? I am afraid that if you think this like
everybody's room you will find Gregory's library even worse. You must
see that now; it is all that you have not seen." Karen took her last
bull by the horns, leading her out.

"Has it red wall-paper, sealing-wax red; with racing prints on the walls
and a very large photograph over the mantelpiece of a rowing-crew at
Oxford?" Madame von Marwitz questioned with a mixture of roguishness and
resignation.

"Yes, yes, you wicked Tante. How di